The Piano Roll is a major enhancement in FruityLoops 3. It lets you construct songs with unlimited complexity, never possible before using only the Step Sequencer.
- Piano Roll Menu Button
- Draw Mode Button (
P)
- Erase Mode Button (
- Interpolate Mode Button (
- Select Mode Button (
- Close Button
- Time (Horizontal) Zoom
- Vertical Maximize/Minimize
- Slide Event
- Note Events
- Integrated Event Editor
- Slide Toggle (
- Color Group Selector
- Preview Keyboard
- Property/Event Selector
Notes in Piano Roll are displayed as horizontal bars (10) and slides are shown as horizontal bars with a small triangle drawn in the left side (9). You can preview tones by left-clicking the Preview Keyboard keys (14). Pitch is mapped from bottom to top. Horizontal dimension represents time and each number in Piano Roll's ruler represents single bar.
Click channel's name in the title bar to select another channel to display in the Piano Roll.
Each note in the Piano Roll has its own length, as a difference from the Step Sequencer, where the only way to turn off a note is to cut it off using another one. Switching to draw mode (2) lets you draw, edit and delete notes. Left-click in Piano Roll's grid to draw a note. After that you can drag its left side to move it vertically and horizontally. Dragging its right side horizontally changes note's length. You can right-click a note to erase it (you may instead switch to erase mode to erase with left-clicks (3) ).
You can select several notes, so you can move and resize them all at once. Press and hold Ctrl key and either click a note to select it, or drag a rectangle to select all notes in rectangular area. You can also Ctrl+click or double-click the time ruler and drag along it to select all notes in specified time range. Press Shift key together with Ctrl to add to the current selection. To deselect all notes, while holding Ctrl key, click empty space in Piano Roll's grid. Instead of holding Ctrl key, you can also switch Piano Roll to select mode by clicking the select mode button (5).
You can also draw complete chords at once instead of single notes. Right-click
the draw mode button (2) and from the
menu select a chord type. Now when you draw in the Piano Roll, FruityLoops automatically
creates a chord. To draw single notes again, right-click the draw mode button
and select None (
Shift+N).
In the Piano Roll you can make group of notes slide gradually from one pitch to another. For this purpose, you draw special slide events, which "tell" FruityLoops how notes should be slid. Slides look exactly as note events, but they have a small white rectangle drawn in their left side (9). To draw slides, click the slide toggle button (12). Then you can click it again to draw note events. Note that slides do NOT produce a sound themselves (although they preview when created/moved). Instead they make existing notes slide. When you draw a slide event, FruityLoops will start sliding existing notes towards pitch where the slide is positioned. If several notes are slid simultaneously, the topmost is taken as a reference for the pitch offset (see picture below). At the end of the slide event, all notes are slid, so the topmost note has the pitch of the slide event. After the slide event ends, notes still remain offset from their original pitch.
This image shows how pitch changes with the slide event.
Note that slide events have all usual properties of a note - velocity (note volume), panning, cutoff and resonance, so during pitch sliding, it also "slides" all properties from those of notes to those of the slide.
You can draw notes and slides in four colors - green, cyan, pink and yellow. The color you use does not make a difference in note's sound, it is instead used when sliding. Slides will apply only to notes that have their color. For example, yellow slide will bend the pitch of yellow notes, but will ignore green notes. This way you can have up to four notes sliding simultaneously in different directions (one for each color group). To select the current drawing color, click the appropriate button on the color group selector (13).
Slide color groups are also used with the Mono mode in the polyphony settings (see Miscellaneous Channel Settings). Mono mode applies to each color group separately. So using all four colors actually can result in a polyphony of up to 4 voices at once.
The Piano Roll includes an integrated event editor (11), which lets you quickly edit channel's volume, panning and pitch right inside the Piano Roll. However, the event editor in Piano Roll has one extension - you can also edit notes properties. Notes properties behave similar to the normal events, and are displayed in the event editor as lines with a small square at the top. Using this extension you can edit note's velocity (local note volume), panning, cutoff and resonance - these are exactly the same properties you can edit using the Graph Editor if you were entering notes in the Step Sequencer. Note that since note's properties are part of the actual note, you can not move, delete or interpolate any of them. When you move a note horizontally (thus changing its start position), its properties also move with it. To choose what property or event type to edit, click the property/event selector (15) and choose property/event type from the menu that appears.
NOTE: When several notes start at the same time you can not set the properties of each individual note (they are all set at once). To solve this issue, first select the notes you want to modify - editing this way alters only the properties of the selected notes. Another solution is to use the Note Properties Box (explained below).
Everything else in this integrated event editor works as in normal Event Editor window.
There is another way to set notes properties. It is useful when you want to set different properties for notes that start simultaneously (so their properties appear as one in the integrated event editor). Double-click a note to display its properties box.
Lets you change note's properties - panning, velocity (note's volume), cutoff and resonance. The reset button next to Level's panel title bar resets note's properties to levels they had before launching the properties box.
NOTE: If the note you double-click is a part of a selection, then the properties you set apply to all notes in that selection. The Time section is not available in that case, because the selected notes might have different length or start point.
Inverts the portamento state for this note. If the global portamento (see Misc Channel Settings) for this channel is off, for this note it is on and vice versa.
Lets you change note's start position and length. For each of both settings there are three LCD-s, for entering position length in bars:steps:ticks format.
This menu provides many important commands for editing Piano Roll data, such as copying and pasting notes, converting color groups etc. You can access Piano Roll's menu by clicking the Piano Roll menu button (1).
Ctrl+X) - Cuts all selected notes/slides
to clipboard. Note that using this command on events in the integrated event
editor deletes them instead of sending them to clipboard.
Ctrl+C) - Copies all selected notes/slides
to clipboard.
Ctrl+V) - Pastes notes/slides from clipboard.
Ctrl+A) - Selects all notes, slides and events
in the Piano Roll.
Ctrl+N) - Applies quantitize to all selected
notes/slides depending on the global snap setting in the Recording
panel (if nothing is selected, applies to all).
Shift+C) - Repaints all selected notes/slides
in the current drawing color (if nothing is selected, applies to all).
Ctrl+A) - Initializes the integrated event
editor with the current value of the corresponding automated control.
Ctrl+L)- Shows the LFO
box, which lets you draw LFO-shaped events in the integrated event editor.
Note that this feature is enabled only when in the property/event selector
(15) type of event is selected, instead
of a note property type.
Ctrl+M)- Shows the Import
MIDI Data dialog box, which lets you import notes from MIDI files to the
Piano Roll. Selecting this command from a Piano Roll window imports only note
events. To import controller data (cutoff, resonance etc.) from a MIDI file,
launch the Import MIDI Data dialog box from a separate Event
Editor window.
Shift+Ctrl+V)- Works exactly as the previous
command, but uses the MIDI clipboard data rather than a MIDI file. You can
paste data from any sequencer that can copy to MIDI clipboard format, as for
example Cakewalk Pro Audio (TM).Shows a submenu that contains some predefined chord types. Select a chord type
and draw chords in the Piano Roll. Select None
( Shift+N)
to draw single notes again.
Alt+S) Whet turned on, notes, slides and all other events will snap based on the global snap setting in the Recording panel.
When checked, the Piano Roll will automatically display the first non-empty channel when switching between patterns.
Alt+V) When checked, the Piano Roll will show the scores of all channels in the current pattern (they are displayed in the background and have a semitransparent look). Note that these scores are displayed only like a reference for easier sequencing - you can not select or edit them in any way.
Alt+Z) Zooms in/out horizontally (time).
